


my lonely days are through

by nonbinarynino



Series: both of you [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Childbirth, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Implied/Referenced Torture, Pregnancy, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-06-30 19:33:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15758259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonbinarynino/pseuds/nonbinarynino
Summary: Pidge is scared, too, though. Because two phoebs means that she'll have had her baby by then, and she has no idea how her parents will react. She doesn't think that it will be anything bad, especially once she informs them that she hadn't really had any say in the matter, but they've always been so supportive of her being career-oriented for at least another decade or so. Hell, her mom had sat her down at some point and told her that it was okay if she never got married at all. Which Pidge had been thankful for, at the time, since she hadn't really known if she'd wanted to, but now...Now she's nineteen and pregnant.-Pidge navigates the end of her pregnancy and the beginning of something new. Lance helps.





	my lonely days are through

**Author's Note:**

> You pretty much need to read the first one to understand/enjoy this one, sorry!
> 
> Content warnings: Mentions of the torture that Pidge went through before the first part of the series, panic attacks, descriptive details of pain. Vaginas are spoken about (gasp, the horror)
> 
> AU set somewhere around season 6 - the castle is intact.
> 
> Hover over links for translations!

"Holy shit, Pidge, you grew!"

Those are the first words out of Matt's mouth as he runs through the ship halls, arms outstretched. Pidge laughs and doesn't even try to move towards him - she's eight months pregnant, okay, and running isn't exactly her forte right now. The hug is a bit awkward, and she basically has to twist her body in order to bury her face into his neck, since her belly is kind of  _huge_ and would get in the way otherwise. Even so, it's so worth it. She had missed Matt so much during the four months that he had spent with his team.

"Only horizontally, though," Pidge says in response after a beat, pulling away to get a good look at her brother. He has a new scratch on his forehead, but overall seems to be okay. "How long are you staying this time?"

"A few phoebs," Matt answers, taking her head in his hand and leaning her up a little to look at her closer. "Four or five, at least. Have you been sleeping well? You look tired."

She rolls her eyes at her big brother's antics - every video call that they've had lately has included some section of "what have you been eating?" or "do you need me to come back? I will." It's heartwarming that he cares, but still. It's kind of exhausting. "Not really," she admits. "I didn't sleep last night. I spent all night cleaning the lab because I had too much energy."

" _Pidge,_ " he huffs. As happy as she is to have Matt here with her, she knows that this is only the beginning. "I'll complain more about that later. How have you been?"

"Good," she says, taking his hand and leading him through the ship. She wants to show him the lab, but she knows that they'll have to greet the others first. The lab is the only place she's really technically allowed to go anymore, since Lance and Allura had joined forces against her to stop her from going on missions when she hit the four month mark. "I have a lot to tell you! We made a bunch of advancements with the particle barrier, oh, and we think that Hunk found an undiscovered species of algae-"

Matt allows her to drag him off, only looking slightly irritated at her lack of self-care but mostly amused. She's not sure where most of the crew is, but she knows that Lance and Keith are in the training room, since the former likes to send her constant updates on where he is and what he's doing when they're apart. She pretends to be annoyed about it all the time, but it  _is_ nice to know where he is when she wants foot rubs or when she gets excited about the baby kicking.

The smell of sweat is the first thing that she registers when she pulls Matt into the training room, a scent that her nose does not really appreciate. Her nose has been  _awful_ lately - she had to avoid the entire wing of the ship surrounding the kitchen for a few vargas after Hunk cooked something up with some Olkarion spice. The sound of clattering metal is the next thing, loud and almost unbearable. Lance and Keith are sparring against each other, but Keith looks up to see Pidge and immediately stops. Lance glances up just a tick after, but instead of merely stopping, he comes bounding up to them.

"Pidge! Matt!" he calls as he comes up, grabbing Matt by the hand and then pulling him into a hug. "How have you been, man?"

"I've been good," Matt responds, hugging Lance back with ease. Once the two of them had had an awkward "so, you're the dad of my sister's kid" talk, their bond had strengthened into something tight-knit. "Mainly worrying about this one. Has she been giving you a hard time?"

"Only sometimes," Lance says, and Pidge forgets to be annoyed about the fact that they're talking about her as if she's not there. She's mainly just relieved that Lance seems to be keeping his promise of not telling anybody about how the night prior, she had cried over the fact that there's no avocado toast in space. He steps back from Matt to give Pidge a kiss on the cheek, allowing Keith to come up and shake Matt's hand. 

"Matt," Keith greets, firm as ever. "How's the team?"

"They're all fine!" Matt says, cheerful, before pulling Keith into a hug of his own. Pidge grins at the surprised look on the latter's face. "Olia got into a bit of a bad situation a few quintants ago but ... it's all good now."

As Keith expresses his concern, Lance leans over towards Pidge's ear. "You okay?" he whispers. "Maybe you should try resting since you didn't sleep at all last night."

"Maybe later," Pidge says, if not just to placate him for now. "I want to show Matt some of the new developments in the lab."

"You Holts," Lance mutters, but there's no actual annoyance behind it. "It's always science first, common sense later."

Matt overhears him and cackles.

 

* * *

 

Pidge wakes up at an ungodly hour the next morning, her stomach grumbling to inform her that she's hungry as hell.

She knows that it's early without even checking the time. There are no sounds coming from outside besides the constant hum of the ship. Usually, when she wakes up in the morning, she can hear  _something -_ the sound of machinery buzzing to life, incoherent voices drifting through the vents, footsteps passing by the bedroom door. Lance is sleeping soundly next to her, but he would be even if it  _was_ morning. It's not that he's a particularly late sleeper, but lately Pidge has been waking up earlier and earlier. The only people who rival her are Coran and Shiro.

When she  _does_ check her tablet, it reads to be three in the morning. She knows that she has two options: she could try and go back to sleep and probably get the rest that she knows she  _needs,_ or she could go and get some food, possibly leaving her exhausted later. The rumbling in her stomach tells her that it's not really a choice.

Getting out of bed is  _hard._ Not even because she's comfy and Lance's warmth next to her combined with her fleece blanket is  _perfect_ for sleeping conditions, but because of her belly. It's a process with multiple parts, more so than it used to be. After a few doboshes - yes,  _doboshes,_ of struggling, she does eventually end up on her feet. Finally.

Pidge tries to be as stealthy as a pregnant woman  _can_ be, her swollen feet making hard stomping sounds against the cold ground as she exits her bedroom. She peeks one last time at Lance, who thankfully is still sleeping, (God, she would have felt  _bad_ if she woke him up in the middle of the night for the third night in a row) and heads out.

She's halfway to the kitchen when she turns a corner to see Keith, who almost walks into her. "Pidge!" he hisses, not angry but trying to be quiet. "What are you doing awake?"

She shrugs at him. "I was hungry. Hey, feel like helping me reach the top shelf?"

Keith stares at the ceiling in exasperation, before looking back down at her. "I swear, you and your eating habits. Lead the way."

So she does, and when she enters the kitchen, she immediately cringes and plugs her nose. "Ugh, Hunk was cooking with that spice again. Will you open that top shelf for me, please? There should be some nut butter in there that I can close my eyes and pretend is peanuts." Keith quirks a smile in her direction at the monologue and does so. Even he has to reach up onto his tiptoes to grab the jar that she'd requested. "It's usually on the bottom shelf since I love the stuff," she continues, "but Hunk got 'mad' at me for eating all of the last one so he put it up high."

"Hunk should realize that you can eat whatever you want," Keith says as he hands her the jar, half a grumble in his distraction. Pidge beams at him, even though she knows that he'd only said it to placate her. She fishes around in one of the drawers for a spoon, and digs straight into the jar. Keith watches in disgusted fascination.

"What?" Pidge says through a mouthful. It's sticky and sweet, _just_ what she had been craving. "I'm pregnant. Leave me alone."

"I was  _just_ siding with you!"

"Yeah, yeah," she answers, waving her hand around, but she's smiling. "I miss my coffee, too. Ever since we found out that space coffee is like, triple the caffeine of normal coffee, I'm not allowed to have  _any_ of it. Matt and Lance have been having some long-distance discussion about where to hide the stuff. In a month, I'm going to drink so much that I  _die._ "

"Please don't," Keith says, weary. "If you die, no one else can get Lance to do anything."

"Fair," Pidge replies. She scoops up another spoonful of the nut butter, but pauses with it halfway to her mouth at the feeling of a kick in her abdomen. It's not a new feeling, since the baby kicks a few times a day, but it's always something worth pausing over. She gently places the spoon back into the jar and puts her hands on her belly.

"Pidge?" Keith asks, voice unnecessarily concerned. "Are you okay? Should I wake up Coran?" Coran and Allura have the most medical knowledge than the rest of them, different species be damned, so those are the two that are being trained for when her labor arrives. The others all have been been trained with some basic concepts and ideas, in the event that everyone is separated when she goes into labor, but it's definitely a worst case scenario.

"No, no," she replies. "Wait a second." After a few ticks, the baby kicks again. And again. Sometimes, when she starts kicking, she doesn't stop for almost a varga. Almost everyone on board as felt her kick by now, everyone except for ... oh. "Do you want to feel her kick?"

She watches him still, almost as though he's debating how to say no. "Okay," he agrees after a moment, taking a tentative step closer. "Where do I put my hand?"

Pidge holds out her hand, which he hesitantly takes, and puts his hand on the right side of her belly. "She's kicking right here," she says. "It's always during the night when I'm trying to sleep." The baby kicks again, right into where Keith's hand is.

He jerks back with the motion of it, but he keeps his hand steady. After a second, the baby kicks another time. " _Woah._ Does that hurt?"

"It's not comfortable," Pidge admits. "A few months ago it was fine, but now there's a little pain. It's worth it, though."

Keith withdraws, and the smile that he gives her is full of awe. It's a look that Pidge is still getting used to seeing on other people's faces due to her, something that she's been noticing for the past few years. "You're a badass," he tells her. 

"Thanks, Keith."

 

* * *

 

When she opens her eyes, Lance is already awake. He's still in bed next to her, though, rolled over to his side and watching her through half-closed eyes.

"You slept in," he murmurs, in lieu of a hello. He looks soft, lips twitched into a smile that she can only tell is there because she's so close to him. He reaches out to trace her jaw to her neck, then down her shoulder and upper arm. "How long were you out of bed last night? I woke up for a second and you were gone."

"I got hungry," she whispers, intertwining her fingers over the hand that's on her arm. "Keith helped me raid the shelves."

"A paragon of our time," he says, voice twinged with humor. He leans forward and kisses her, simply because he can, and the mere gesture has her grinning as though it were the first time. "How are you feeling?"

"Good," Pidge answers. "I kinda feel like staying in bed all day, but I know I can't. Allura and Shiro both need my help with stuff." She'd promised to fix a machine on the bridge for Shiro, and to help Allura with an upgrade for the Blue Lion. It had seemed like a great idea at the time, being useful, but now ...

"If it's any consolation, I wish you could stay in bed, too," Lance says. "I'd feel better knowing that you're in bed and not giving birth in some utility closet."

" _Lance,_ " she scolds. "I have four more weeks. I'm not going to go  _into_ any utility closets, forget about giving birth in them."

"It  _could_ happen," he insists. "I worry, okay! What if the power goes off on the ship and you go into labor and nobody's there? Or if you fall down and you can't get up and no one's around to help you because we're all on a mission or-"

 _"Lance,_ " she says again, this time her voice laced with giggles. "You're thinking of too many worst case scenarios."

"I need to be  _prepared_ ," he corrects. "So that I can be useful in such a worst case scenario."

Pidge pouts and drags him into another kiss. She could kiss him for hours and hours, but there will never be enough time. When he pulls away, he instead buries his face into her shoulder, hovering over her. His arm holds him upright, positioned so that he won't squish her. "I love you," he whispers into her collarbone, and the words come out as if they are the most precious thing that he could have ever said. He says it as though he's admitting some deep secret that he's been holding close to heart for an eternity. Every time that he tells her he loves her, it's always like this. Secure. Safe.

"And I love you," she answers, and the weight of the words surprise her. That feeling of heaviness and sincerity just won't do,of course, so she replaces it with a grin. "If you love me so much, snookums, how about a foot rub?"

His laugh sends vibrations through her skin, but it's not a refusal.

 

* * *

 

They set course for Earth.

It's weird. It's  _really_ weird. They have two phoebs until they expect to get there, not wanting to use a wormhole in case of any unknown planets in distress on the way. Pidge is excited, to say the least. Matt had been planning on going back to his rebel team after a few months after Pidge gives birth, but it seems like his team has no one left to _fight._  The two of them talk a lot about how thrilled they are to hug their parents again, to pet Bae Bae, to breathe in Earth's air. Lance talks about meeting her family officially, as her boyfriend instead of her teammate, which is similarly thrilling since it makes everything so much more  _real._

She's scared, too, though. Because two phoebs means that she'll have had her baby by then, and she has  _no_ idea how her parents will react. She doesn't think that it will be anything bad, especially once she informs them that she hadn't really had any  _say_ in the matter, but they've always been so supportive of her being career-oriented for at least another decade or so. Hell, her mom had sat her down at some point and told her that it was okay if she never got married at all. Which Pidge had been thankful for, at the time, since she hadn't really known if she'd wanted to, but now...

Now she's nineteen and pregnant. 

She tries to be sneaky about how she's nervous, but everyone sees right through her. Matt tells her that everything's going to be okay, that they're going to love her the same as they always have. Lance tells her that he  _knows_ her family will be supportive, but even if they aren't, he can teach her Spanish and they can move to Cuba. Pidge will have to meet his family at some point, anyway, but she doesn't exactly want to move to another country  _again._

She wipes her eyes from where she's sitting in the lounge. It's her new spot for when Lance and Matt are preoccupied, since she almost always wants to be sitting down but doesn't want to be cooped up in her room all day. She's debating banning herself from the lab, since even though it's her favorite place, the last time that she was in it, she had knocked over a chemical solution with her belly. It's so  _hard,_ being useless and afraid and-

"Pidge?" a voice sounds, and she looks up to see Hunk, who's holding two milkshakes and wearing a tentative smile on his face. She sniffles at him. "Are you okay?"

"No," she says, and makes grabby motions with her hands at his milkshakes. He smiles and makes his way towards her, handing her one of them and sitting down. "I'm sad. Wanna hear me complain for a few minutes?"

"Sounds great," Hunk says. He slumps against the couch in such a relaxed posture, the milkshake nearly teetering out of the cup as he does so. She usually tries to keep herself from ranting at any of her friends too much, mainly because she doesn't want to give anyone the impression that they cannot do the same to her. Hunk seems to be taking all of this in stride, though.

"I'm scared to go home," Pidge replies, staring down at her milkshake instead of at him. "It's nice up here! Sure, we almost die, like, once a day, but it's nice. I'm afraid of going home for the first time in such a long time, and of course I'm  _excited,_ but... I'm afraid of how my parents will react about the baby. And, God, I don't want to be  _looked_ at. People are going to see me as just another teenage girl who got knocked up and I  _hate_ that! I hate that. I might as well just stay up here forever and live on Olkarion and be their human pet-"

"Pidge," Hunk interrupts, putting his hand that's not holding his milkshake on her shoulder. "You're rambling. There's no use in worrying too much about it. Do you want to go home?"

"Yes," she replies. "More than anything in the universe."

"Then we're going home," he tells her. "And, look, your dad's really cool! Sure, it'll be surprising for him and your mom, but once you tell them what you think that they need to know, they'll  _definitely_ understand. If they don't, then you need new parents." Pidge almost chokes at his blunt statement, since  _no,_ she'd love her parents no matter how they react, but it makes sense. "And if people are jerks and make comments, then we'll fight them. Honest. You have half of this team on protective-big-brother mode. I think Keith would kill for you."

Pidge laughs, pausing to sip her milkshake. She wonders how ridiculous she must look, crying and pregnant and sipping out of a straw. "He better not," she says, and even though she still has anxiety twisting her gut a little, it's more bearable now. "Thanks, Hunk. I really appreciate it."

"No problem," he says, and ruffles her hair. "Hey, want to watch a movie?"

"Yeah, sure!"

(She falls asleep there, barely remembering Lance waking her to bring her to their room.)

 

* * *

 

Pidge wakes up screaming.

"Hey, hey, hey," she hears, but she can't pinpoint where it's coming from, because there's a pounding in her ears and she's  _shaking._ "Pidge, breathe. Pidge. Can you hear me?"

"They tied me up," she blurts, and she's still in the mindset of her dream, of her _memory,_ so she can't quite answer him. "They cut my arm from elbow to wrist and tried to hurt me and then they nailed me to the wall through my elbow, and, and, and, I can't  _breathe._ " Her breaths come ragged and too shallow, and she feels as though she's about to pass out. She's in bed, she realizes, and there's a warmth coming from her back. It's Lance, curled around her, pressing her against his stomach with shushing sounds.

"You're not there," he tells her, petting her hair. A distant part of her realizes that she'll feel horrible for this once she's more lucid. "You're not there. You're okay. You're here with me."

The drug that she'd accidentally ingested on Puig had happened to be a lot more long-lasting than any of them had expected. This isn't the first memory that she'd regained, since she remembers chatting with a few Puigians, but it's the first one about her time on the Galran base. She can almost  _feel_ the pain in her arm, as if it had just happened.

Footsteps come pounding down the hall, so hard and quick that they almost sound like claps of thunder. The knocking on their door is quick, too, and a little desperate. "Pidge?" Matt's voice sounds, loud and panicked. More footsteps follow him, and she realizes that half of the team must be outside of her door. She'd made them all  _worry._  "Pidge, what happened? Are you okay?"

She can't talk, so she just shakes her head. "We're good," Lance calls back, even though nothing is good at all. "She remembered something, I think. She should be good in a few minutes."

"I'm fine," she says, and she's lying. She rests her fingers over her chest, feeling her frantic heartbeat. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"Don't apologize," Lance says. Faintly, she hears whispering outside of the door, and then the sound of multiple people walking away. "God, you just remembered something terrifying. Don't apologize."

"I just woke up everyone on the  _ship,_ " she whispers. "What time is it?"

"I don't know and I don't care," is his answer, and he presses a kiss against her forehead. She doesn't realize how sweaty she is until his lips make contact there, and that's even more embarrassing. "I'm worried about  _you,_ not about them. Do you want to talk it out or do you want to go back to sleep?"

"I don't know if I can go back to sleep," Pidge admits, and her heartbeat has _finally_ stopped pulsing in her ears. "Will you just stay with me until morning?"

He doesn't comment on the fact that there's nowhere he would go at this hour anyway. "Of course," he tells her.

 

* * *

 

"There shouldn't be any war on this planet, but they're still sending a distress signal," Shiro explains. Everyone on the ship is on the bridge, though Matt and Coran are discussing something privately to the side. "We think that it's either outdated and that no one's there to cease the signal, or that they're still suffering under the aftereffects of the violence. The four of you will go, and Pidge will be on back-up in case Voltron needs to be formed."

"She's  _eight months pregnant,_ " Lance says, since he and Allura are the only ones who really talk back to Shiro these days, anyway. Lance never really used to, but, well... he's a bit defensive when it comes to her. It's half mortifying and half cute. "We are not forming Voltron."

"It's only in the event of a worst case scenario," Shiro assures him. "There's almost no chance of it happening. I wouldn't worry at all."

"I'm right here," Pidge grumbles, because apparently they've decided to talk about her as if she's absent. Keith gives her one of his dorky grins in some sort of apology, so she returns it. He doesn't really comfort her when she's sad or anything, but when she's  _angry,_ that's when he really comes in handy. The two of them could usurp Voltron if they wanted. (They don't, though.)

"We don't have any prior records of this planet," Allura informs them. "Which is... peculiar, to say the least, so I would stay on your guard. There's a chance that we might not be who they wanted to respond to their distress signal."

Pidge opens her mouth to say something stupid, like  _why can't I go?_ or  _I wanna fight, too,_ but there's a sudden pain in her upper chest that stops her from doing anything. It  _burns,_ but it's nothing new, so she tries to just bear it. She's been getting heartburn maybe once every few days for the past week. Usually, it's at night or after eating something especially greasy, but now it comes without warning.

She needs to sit down, so she looks towards her station. They'd all been gathered around Allura's work area, so it only takes a few steps for her to go and slide into a sitting position. The others blink at her, but they're used to her doing stuff like this frequently. "Feet hurt, Pidge?" Matt asks, kind. 

"No," she tells him. "I just have heartburn. I'll be okay in a few minutes."

"Heartburn?" Lance repeats, as if it's some sort of fatal condition and not something that she gets frequently. "Do you need water? I'm getting you water!"

" _Lance_ ," Pidge and Shiro say at the same time, but he's already hustling out of the door, in a weird half-run that makes Pidge giggle.

"I'm sorry about that," she apologizes, but she's too busy smiling for it to be genuine. "He's doting, to say the least."

"We could always go without him," Hunk says. "He'll spend the whole time talking about how he misses Pidge, anyway."

"He does  _not,_ " Pidge replies, squinting. Lance would stay focused on whatever task he was ordered to do, right?

"He  _does,_ " Hunk says, totally gleeful. "I can't even be mad about how distracted he gets from the mission because it's so funny. He worries that when we come back, you'll have given birth in some utility closet!"

"He says that to you,  _too_?" she asks, bewildered. "Why is it such a common fear of his for me to give birth in a utility closet?"

"I have no idea," Hunk says, and he sounds totally thrilled about that fact. "It makes no sense!"

"There was one time where he wanted to return so that he could ask if you'd hydrated that day," Allura says, and she looks amused. "Shiro offered to ask you in order to calm his nerves, but he told him that you'd just lie to Shiro."

"I probably wouldn't lie to Shiro," Pidge answers, grinning up at the aforementioned man to show that she's joking about the _probably_. He smiles in return.

"I'm back with water!" Lance says, barreling through the doors, and he has two cups in his hands. He offers them both to Pidge, who just blinks. "I thought you might be thirsty enough for two," he tells her, and it's stupid and endearing and she loves him.

"Thanks, sweetie," she replies, just a little bit cheeky, and takes the water. "You should actually prepare for your mission now."

"Right. Yeah. Okay."

 

* * *

 

A week passes, bringing it to three more until her due date. Allura corners her outside of the shower room one morning with a cup of that Puigian tea that she and Keith had drank with Lysel that one time. The two of them had left with buckets of the stuff, since apparently the "non-spicy" version is quite healthy for mothers-to-be. Half of the entire _universe_ has given them little presents like that, since news came out about her being pregnant shortly after their visit to Puig. The baby room is filled with an Olkarion crib-like bed, a Balmeran seat carrier made out of steel, and a handful of Arusian blankets. "Come drink with me," Allura says, soft. "I want to talk to you about something."

There's something about that specific phrase,  _I want to talk to you,_ that makes Pidge's fight or flight response go off. "Okay," she says, a little wary. "Am I in trouble? Because if there was something in the lab, it wasn't me, because I cut myself off from the lab a few days ago. If there's food missing, it probably - okay, it was probably me, but-"

"Nothing's wrong," Allura assures her. "All of that worrying is bad for the baby. Come walk with me."

So Pidge does, hand gripping the cup with slight worry. They walk for a few moments, and she sips her drink in silence. It's sweeter than she had expected, even though she's had it before. "What do you want to talk about?"

Allura hums. "It's a very consuming duty, being a paladin. I know that you know that. There are missions almost constantly, injuries, the threat of death... It's enough to drive people to madness. That's why the paladins are chosen specifically. They need to be strong enough to deal with the effects." She hesitates, then. "There's no need for Voltron right now, not in a way that common rebel fighters cannot handle. That's why we're going to your Earth. But... there is no telling how long that we will stay there."

Pidge blinks, unsure of where this is going. For a second, she had thought that she might be getting scolded, but that doesn't seem to be what Allura has in mind.

"Pidge, I..." Allura pauses, unsure of how to continue. "We all love you. You are family to us in a way that will never stop. But if you want to stay on Earth when Voltron inevitably goes back to space, may it be a year from now or twenty - we will not blame you. The time also might never come at all. You are going to be a  _mother,_ and that is a commitment that will come before almost anything. I know that Keith has mentioned that he doesn't want any of you to quit, but ... that was before. We would all understand, now."

Pidge stops in place for a moment. At Allura's look of concern, she continues. "Sorry," she says, still a little out of it, and continues walking. "I just hadn't expected that at all." She sips her drink again, debating about what to say. What  _does_ she want to do? She knows, somewhere in the back of her brain, but it takes a while to put those feelings into words. "I love her. She hasn't even been born yet but I  _love_ her so much. But I - I love her enough to be away from her, if it means saving the world that she lives in, you know? If Voltron isn't needed again for as long as I'm alive, then I'm happy to be raising her and working on tech down there. But if the paladins are needed... I want to be one of them. I want to do that for you guys, and for the world, and for _her._ "

Allura smiles at her, and she looks as though she's about to cry. "You are... quite noble," she says. "I am thankful for you, Pidge. I always have been."

"I'm thankful for you, too," Pidge replies, a little embarrassed at her own uncomfortably emotional speech. She cringes as she gets that tingly sensation going through her pelvis, the one that signifies that the baby is knocking into some nerves, some that she hadn't even known she'd _had_ a month ago. "Um, hey, wanna go sit down in the lounge with me?"

"That would be lovely," Allura says, and lets Pidge lead her away.

 

* * *

 

The interior of the Green Lion looks exactly the same as it always does. Pidge hasn't been in here for almost a month, having been denied flight privileges around the four month mark and only coming in every now and then for inspections. That's not why she's in here right now, though. She  _misses_ Greenie, misses connecting with her. It's been such a long time since she's just closed her eyes and let herself feel what her lion feels or see what her lion sees.

When she steps into her lion, though, the first feeling that she receives is one of agitated concern. It's quiet in the back of her mind, perhaps quieter than usual due to the lack of the time that they've spent together. 

"I'm not trying to pilot you," Pidge assures her, running her fingers along the smooth surfaces of the control panel, gently enough not to push anything. "I just missed you, girl." She moves to sit in her seat, grunting at how hard it is for her to do something as simple as  _sit down._ The negative feelings in the back of her mind dissipate quickly after she says that, which is relieving. She doesn't want her  _lion_ to be mad at her.

"Though, I gotta say, the second that I'm okay enough, I'm taking you out on a test run. I don't even need to fight anything cool, I just wanna do a couple laps around the castle or something." She hums a half-forgotten tune at the thought. There's a possibility that it won't happen at all, if she has a particularly long recovery period after giving birth. They'll be in Earth, what, three weeks after her due date? The plan of piloting around space a little is something to look forward to, though, after so many months of not being allowed to do much of anything, so she holds on to it for now.

"We have a name picked out," Pidge tells Greenie. "For the baby. I mean, I know that I chose not to know the gender, so we picked out one of each. We're not telling the others, though. Might as well let the whole thing be a surprise, right?" Coran had told her that he was  _thankful_ that she didn't want to know the gender, because he "got human bits all confuzzled anyway", which is probably the  _last_ thing that you ever want to hear from your doctor, but, well, she trusts him enough. He'd told her that he'd been involved in the Altean version of pediatrics for, what, thirty years? Even though he's been alive for at least six hundred, that's still a long period of time...

Ugh. Pidge is worried.  _Terrified,_ actually, might be a better word, but there's not much that she can do about it. No other planet has a better knowledge of human anatomy than Coran and Allura do. This is the best that she's going to get, so she just needs to accept it. 

She feels a nudge in her belly and smiles, devolving train wreck of a thought process forgotten. "Hey, sweetheart," she says to her belly, placing a hand there over her shirt. (The piece of clothing is something that Hunk had gotten for himself off of Balmera, but had given to her once all of her clothes stopped fitting.) "Are you trying to comfort me, too? You don't have to, since I'm your mamma, so it should be the other way around."

Pidge pauses, running her thumb up and down over her belly in what she hopes is a soothing motion. Lance had told her to talk to the baby as much as she could, so that she could recognize Pidge's voice, so she should probably keep speaking. "I hope I'm a good mom," she says, and it surprises her. "It's not that I never wanted kids, but I'll admit that I went back-and-forth a lot. I just wasn't sure if I'd be any good at it, you know?"

"But now," she says, quiet, as if she doesn't want anyone overhearing, even though there's nobody around, "now I can't imagine a life without you. When I think about my future, I still think about science and astronomy and mathematics and all of that, but ... I think about doing it from Earth. I think about going to the Garrison in the mornings and coming back to you in the evenings. Maybe, once you're an adult, I could go back to space again, but I wouldn't want to go while you were still a kid. Unless Voltron is needed again, and then ... then I guess I'll have to."

She frowns at the thought, at how even though she'd told Allura that she'd go, she doesn't  _want_ to anymore. She likes space, likes meeting the aliens of new cultures and seeing sights that only a handful of humans have seen before, but she was never meant to be up here long term. At the end of the day, she wants to be back on Earth. 

"But even if I do," she whispers, "I'll  _always_ come back for you. Promise."

 

* * *

 

"According to this book, she's as big as a pumpkin," Pidge says. Her lower torso feels heavy, almost as if the baby is hanging out down there and waiting impatiently to get out. She'd had a surprising burst of energy this morning and had spent time wandering around the ship, even going to the extent of _cleaning her room._ Matt had walked by and been shocked to the point of following her around for the rest of the morning. Now, they're hanging out in the dining hall, mainly so that Pidge can drink enough water. Apparently, hydrating helps with the fact that she feels as though there's an itch in her belly that she just can't scratch, but it doesn't seem to be working yet. "A  _pumpkin_! Pumpkins are so big! I don't know if I can push a pumpkin out of me, Matt. I really don't."

"Mom did it twice," Matt assures her. "She got through it both times."

"Oh, shit, do you remember how they had to vacuum me out because my head was too big? What if it's  _genetic,_ " she replies, suddenly worried. She hadn't even _thought_ about this, staring at the table in front of her as if it will somehow help her regain her composure. It's so clean and white, almost looking medical. Almost like the table at the Galra base that they'd ... _experimented_ on her on. It takes Pidge a few seconds to realize that she wouldn't have been able to recall that memory a few minutes ago. It's disorienting, because now she has a distant memory of staring up at a ceiling and  _screaming,_ but she doesn't feel as panicked as she had that other night. 

"Pidge?" Matt prompts her. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," she answers, shaking out of her reverie. She hopes that she's almost done with all of the remembering, because she's tired of how abruptly they are thrust upon her. "But, hey, we don't have a medical vacuum up here! Not even a  _normal_ vacuum, because they're all built into robots or-"

" _Pidge,_ " he says, trying not to sound amused. "Altean equipment is advanced enough that they don't _need_ vacuums like that. Plus, last week, they were worried that your baby was too  _tiny._ She's not going to grow to be too big in a week."

"You don't know how babies work."

"No," Matt agrees. "But I know a little. And I know that worrying about things that we have already prepared for is useless."

Pidge huffs and rubs her eyes. "So much could go wrong," she says. "Allura and Coran have been studying for months, but they're not human! Allura's never delivered a baby, and Coran's never delivered a human, and we don't have all of the equipment. Isn't it neglectful not to worry?"

"No," Matt repeats. He's patient with her, even when she's ignoring his advice in favor of having a freak out. "Pidge... things go wrong every day. But I swear that we have done everything that we can do in order to make sure everything goes smoothly. I can't promise that there won't be issues, because there very much could be, but there's nothing that you can prevent. It's just a waiting game now."

She knows that he's right, so she just drinks more of her water so that she doesn't have to admit it. "I hate waiting," she tells him.

"I know," he confirms. "But you've got us."

"And me!" a voice says, and there's Lance, coming through the doorway. He's sweaty, so he must have been training. "Hey sunshine, hey Matt. You having fun?"

"No," Pidge replies, at the same time that Matt says "yes." Lance laughs, as if he had expected no different, and leans over to press a kiss against Pidge's temple.

He slides down into the space next to her and steals a sip of her water. "Man, Shiro kicked my ass today," he tells them. "Matt, you should join us next time. Side with me against the muscular ones."

"You're all muscular," Pidge points out, rubbing her hand over her belly so that she can try and soothe the itch. It doesn't work, so she reaches for her glass of water again. _Maybe this time_. "You work out, like, every day."

"But there's Shiro," Matt explains, grinning in a way that no sister really wants to see their brother look. She can tell that he's joking, in that sibling way that means he's just trying to annoy her. "Shiro's a whole other type of muscular. I'm not even into him, but that's eye candy."

Pidge wrinkles her nose. Isn't Shiro nearing thirty, now? Even though that's not old, it's definitely too old for her to have ever even thought about him like that. "You sound like you have a celebrity crush.  _Eye candy._ Who even says that anymore?"

"People who look at Shiro," Lance points out. "Sorry, babe, I very much enjoyed the loyalty, but Shiro's just objectively attractive." 

"I'll get back at you," Pidge says, waving her finger in his face, even though her tone doesn't sound very vengeful at all. "I'll flirt with someone in revenge."

"I look forward to it," he replies. "Oh, hey, Hunk wanted to talk to you about some sort of energy quintessence modifier thing. He's in the lab and said he'd be in there for a while. He can meet you outside if you're afraid of knocking stuff over."

"Okay, I'll go in a bit," she says, but she's already dreading a few seconds from now when she'll have to get out of her seat. Everything's so  _hard,_ and she's so  _tired,_ but she has so much energy at the same time. Using up her energy just makes her tired, and then she just wants to sleep, making her exhaustion a cycle that never ends. She feels ginormous _,_ and that wouldn't even necessarily be a problem if she weren't so used to being the smallest person in every room.

Pidge stops the flow of self-pity when gets an idea, grinning at Lance as she makes the necessary adjustments in order to stand up. "Hunk's a cutie. Maybe I'll ask him to modify  _my_ quintessence."

Matt groans, but Lance just takes her hand and kisses it. He stands up, first, and then helps pull her up. "You burped the first forty numbers of pi with Hunk last week, dear. I highly doubt that you want to leave me for him."

"Maybe that's the new romance," she says, and waddles out of the room. He laughs on her way out.

 

* * *

 

Pidge types away at her station on the bridge. She's been playing around with an alarm system designated around the baby's room, but is having difficulty about its timing. The room had been set up a few months ago by Allura and Lance, who had been terrified by the idea of a preemie and had wanted to be as prepared as possible. Sometimes in her experiments, the alarm goes off when there's nothing there, or it goes off during one of the times that Pidge is trying to set it to  _not_ go off, like in the middle of the day when everyone is awake and up and about.

Ugh. Maybe she should just turn off the timing system all together. It's not like bad guys are going to wait until after the lights go out to nab her baby if they've already gotten all of the way on the ship.

It's not like bad guys are going to nab her baby at  _all,_ but if Lance has to prepare for utility closet births and heartburn fatalities, then she has to prepare for stuff like this. It's all that she  _can_ do.

A contraction starts wracking her body, sudden and sharp but not quite painful, so she bunches her hands into fists and waits it out. It's not really unexpected, since she's been getting these preparatory contractions at least in one bunch a day, but they always manage to take her by surprise. They don't  _ache,_ not really, but they're definitely not comfortable. 

"Well," Pidge says to herself, releasing her hands from her own tight grip and rubbing her palms together soothingly. Matt is taking up the others on their offer to train together, but she doesn't really know where Coran and Shiro are. She figures that's for the best - they probably need a good day off. "I guess that's a sign enough to take a break, huh?"

After a few minutes of steadying her breathing, she does, standing up and debating what she should do with all of her free time. She could stop by the others in the training room, try and take a nap, or go grab a snack...

It's not even really a question. She eats so much these days, and she's hungry now, so she slowly but surely makes her way to the kitchen. What is there to even eat? There's space goo, sure, but she wonders if there's something she can actually bite and chew _,_ like oatmeal with those weird cone-shaped oats or those black root vegetables from Arus. Just the mere thought makes her hungry. Hunk has been preparing some meals ahead of time for the first few days with the baby when everyone's too tired to do anything but eat, sleep, and make sure that the baby does the same. She's truly grateful for his help in all of this, for  _everybody's_ help in all of this. Her team has made sure that she's never felt alone, not even for a second.

The kitchen is empty, as she'd expected. A cabinet has been labeled  _Pidge's Criminal Cabinet_ in pretty handwriting, since after the nut butter incident, she'd been caught by Hunk in the middle of the night with an entire block of cheese in her mouth. It's embarrassing but she's also completely thankful for it. The cabinet currently contains nothing appealing, though, just more nut butter and bread, so she roots through the fridge.

Aha! There's a smoothie there, bright blue and  _exactly_ like the banana-blueberry smoothies her mother used to make. She snatches it with her left hand and knocks back a sip, not bothering to pour her own glass. She'll probably drink it all, anyway. The taste is surprising, a little sour but mostly sweet, and it's  _good._

Pidge chugs back half of it in a few seconds. It doesn't taste too different from some of the food goo, but she'd much rather drink this anyway.

Another contraction comes, and she might just be imagining it, but it seems to have come a lot more quickly than she had been expecting. Sure, she usually gets them in bunches, but they're usually around twenty minutes apart. Maybe time had just gone by really fast? A few more seconds pass before she's really able to move again, but when she does, it's with a sigh of relief.

Something trickles down her leg. She blinks, having not felt anything really come out but feeling it against her skin, and looks down. Did she pee her pants again? Shit, she'd already done that  _twice_ this week. The first time had been when Hunk had made her laugh so hard that she had choked on her milk and peed, which she'd sworn him to secrecy about. Now she'll have to waddle back to the locker room or her bedroom and try to avoid being seen by everyone. She's sure that nobody would make fun of her, but it's still  _embarrassing._

Wait. That's - that's a lot of fluid. Not like a waterfall or anything, but enough to make her suspicious. Pidge, in one of her lesser moments, leans down and sniffs. That doesn't smell like pee. She presses her fingers against the damp fabric of her sweatpants (they'd been Shiro's, once, but with a lack of maternity clothes, they are the only bottoms that currently fit her) and looks to see the clear liquid shining on her fingers. That doesn't  _look_ like -

Oh, no.

Oh,  _shit._

Pidge's water just broke, and she's standing in the middle of the kitchen with a smoothie in one hand and her own fucking  _amniotic fluid_ on the other. Those hadn't been Braxton Hicks contractions at all, had they? This is _real._ Does she have to tell the others right now? It's not like she can hide from them, not when a puddle of liquid will follow her wherever she goes. Shit. Shit. She was supposed to have three more days!

She debates just  _screaming,_ not because she's afraid but because she knows that it will get everyone to run towards her. But she doesn't really want all of them here right now, not immediately, so she decides to hold off and make her way towards the training room. Ha, she can't  _wait_ to see the look on Lance's face.

The walk takes about twice as long as it should, since she's waddling really slowly. She doesn't necessarily feel as though she  _has_ to walk slow, but the feeling of the wet fabric of her pants rubbing together is sure to give her a rash, and she doesn't really want to deal with that when she's probably going to be pushing a baby out of her within the next twenty-four hours anyway.

Nobody notices her when she opens the sliding doors to the training room. Keith and Matt are on the same team right now, Keith with his bayard and Matt with his fighting staff. Lance and Allura face off against them. They're all really good at what they do, and despite the situation, Pidge realizes how _proud_ she is to be their teammate and their friend. Allura goes in to attempt to knock Keith off of his feet, but he jumps over her polearm and does a ninety degree turn. He glances at Pidge quickly, just enough to notice who it is but not long enough to notice any details about her condition.

"Pidge!" Keith says, jumping back from Allura's aim another time. "Came to watch us spar?"

"Couldn't miss it," is Pidge's reply, even though she's definitely missed it a hundred times before. "Though, uh..." She watches them continue to fight. Keith gets the upper hand on Lance, until Allura comes to his rescue like a princess in shining armor. "Guys?"

"What's up, Pidge?" Matt asks. None of them have even really looked at her, and it's amusing to think of the fact that she could probably walk out of here with none of them being the wiser.

"Uh," she says again, trying to figure out how to phrase this. "My water just broke?"

The fighting all stops at once, with Lance halfway through a step and stumbling forward. All of them are looking at her, now, and she feels a little like a test subject under display. There's no question that her water  _had_ just broken, since her sweatpants are gray and the water darkens them considerably. Matt is the first one to run towards her, dropping his staff and putting his hands on her shoulders for gentle reassurance that she honestly doesn't really need. None of this has really sunk in yet. "It's not any funky color, right?" he asks. "Just clear?" Behind him, Lance runs to her, too, but he takes a bit too much time because he slips on his way over. Keith and Allura come at a more leisurely pace, since they've probably been mentally preparing for this for a long time now.

"Yeah," Pidge confirms. Before she was pregnant, she would have been embarrassed by the fact that her older brother is currently squinting at her pants, but her dignity went out the window a long time ago. Almost half of the people on this ship have seen her vagina during medical checkups or other incidents, and that's not even including Lance. "We're good. I checked right away because I thought that I peed my pants again."

"We need to get Coran," Lance says, and there's a tone in his voice that displays that he's trying very hard not to freak out, but that he can't quite help it. His hands keep running through his hair. "Where is he?"

"He and Shiro went to the library," Allura says, and Pidge is thankful that she's not overreacting about this. Actually, it seems like Lance is the only one who is, which is surprising because she'd thought that Matt would be right behind him. "Keith, can you go grab him? I'm going to get Pidge set up in the med bay."

"Sure," Keith says, for once the one taking orders instead of barking them. He gives Pidge a grin, which is more support than he could probably think to say in words. "See you guys in a bit."

"Where's Hunk?" Pidge asks. Matt puts a hand on her shoulder in comfort, even though she really doesn't need it. "I just left my amniotic fluid all over his kitchen. I feel bad."

"Why are you worrying about that?" Lance asks back, voice rising in hysterics. "You are about to give  _birth_!"

"Yeah," she agrees. "I'll find that really worrying in a few hours, I swear. I should probably walk in the back of the group so that you guys don't slip on my ... er, 'water'? That sounds gross. I hate the fact that I just said that."

Matt snorts. "Pidge, do you need to take my arm or anything?"

Pidge opens her mouth to say no, but another contraction ripples through her, leaving her grasping Matt's arm anyway. This is the first one that  _hurts._ "Oh, God, okay, maybe I do," she says. "Come on, Matty, lead me to my doom."

"At your service," he says, ever the nerd, and gently pulls her to the side so that Allura and Lance can take the lead. Allura does so, but Lance stays rigid at the back, as if he's protecting them from some unseen backstabbing force. Pidge shrugs at the other two, who give her similar expressions.

As they walk by the lab, Hunk bursts out of the door, nearly barreling into them. He looks at them, blinking, and his lack of reaction shows that no one has told him anything yet. "Uh - did you pee your pants or something? Because that's, er, totally never happened before."

He's such a bad liar, and it fills Pidge with a big burst of familial affection. "I'm in labor, probably," she tells him, but the humorous air that had been in her voice just moments before is gone. She's so uncomfortable now, the ghost of her contractions still making her body feel all twitchy, the feeling of exhaustion threatening her bones.

"Oh," Hunk says, barely reacting for a moment while it sets in. " _Oh my God!_ Okay. I'm going to go over here so that I don't get in the way. Do you need anything?"

"I need to get Pidge to the med bay," Allura replies, gentle but firm. "I'll call if I need you, but you can wait outside with the others once everything's starting."

"Bye, Hunk," Pidge says. "See you when I'm no longer pregnant."

 

* * *

 

The contractions get worse as time progresses. They're intense to the point where she mouths  _ow, ow, ow,_ silently each time, feeling like a vise grip that clamps her insides and then releases just as sudden as it had come. They must be about two or three minutes apart, now, but Pidge still isn't allowed to  _do_ anything about it besides lay there and hold Lance's hand.

It must have been at least an hour since the last time that Lance had gone to update the others. Maybe two? At first, it had been going on too long, boredom overcoming her pain, but once the contractions started getting  _too_ strong and  _too_ painful, the time in between them goes all too quickly. Lance is her saving grace in all of it, whispering incomprehensible comments and stroking her hand. Part of her is in an irritable state of  _don't you touch me,_ but it's overcome by the soothing words that he says. The two sides battle it out the whole time, but she just closes her eyes and hopes that she doesn't say anything too rude to Lance.

"Lance, now would be a fantastic chance to update the others," Coran says, even though the mere thought of Lance leaving makes Pidge anxious. "It's been about five vargas since your last update, and it will most definitely be your last one! I'm sure they are just all aflutter waiting to hear!"

 _Five vargas?_ Lance had gone out briefly for consumables and updates while she was still mostly fine, about two hours into all of this. Fuck, it's been  _seven_ hours by now, maybe eight since vargas are a little more than an hour. It feels as though it's been both longer and shorter than that. When she thinks about the ultimate time that she's been in here, it feels like an eternity, but it doesn't feel like such a long time ago that she was still sitting upright and laughing.

"Do you want me to go?" Lance asks her, brushing hair out of her eyes. She looks at him and notices the pinched expression on his face, as though he doesn't want to leave either. There's a bag underneath his chair that Pidge hadn't noticed before, and she suspects it's some sort of baby bag that Lance had prepared and had forgotten to tell her about. "I'll run to the lounge and back. It'll be just a minute."

She doesn't want him to leave at all, but she doesn't want to leave her friends outside waiting for long enough that they all get anxious, either. Hunk might have a breakdown, and Matt might barge in. "Go," she says, a little too breathy due to all of the teeth clenching that she's been doing. "Be quick, I need a hand to crush." She lets go of his hand as punctuation for the statement, and feels both bad and proud of herself when he immediately starts shaking it to relieve some of the pain.

Lance presses a kiss to cheek and quickly ducks out of the room. For a minute, it's silent, just her laying there on the medical bed, panting as she stares up at the ceiling. Allura moves towards her, placing a delicate hand on Pidge's shoulder. "You're doing great," she says, beaming. "I'm proud of you."

"Thank you," Pidge says, voice barely above a whisper, as if she's afraid to talk loudly. It's then that another contraction comes barreling through her, and -

That's the first time that she screams that day, half an incomprehensible screech and half an Italian swear _._  It isn't the last time.

Lance is back in an instant, sitting next to her and cooing words that she can't hear over her own vocals.  _He's a good boyfriend,_ she thinks, and she'll feel endeared about it later. Right now, all she can focus on is how  _bad_ it hurts. There had been a part of her, throughout this entire process, that had thought that it couldn't possibly be  _that_ bad. She's been tortured and shot and sliced, and those had all been horrible. But this? This hurts in a way that nothing quite ever has.

When the contraction stops, she feels tears in her eyes. "I don't know if I can do this," she says, as if there's any other option, as if it isn't far too late now.

"Of course you can," Lance tells her, squeezing her hand lightly. "You're a badass, remember? You've done things that we all only  _dream_ of doing. And I'm here with you for the rest of the way, okay?"

"Okay," Pidge says. "Okay."

 

* * *

 

Childbirth, it turns out, really sucks. Half-delirious, Pidge decides to apologize to her mother a hundred times when she gets home for putting her through all of it. Her mother wouldn't accept any apologies, of course, and probably laugh at her for thinking to give her one.

Pidge understands why it's worth it, though, the second that there's a baby -  _her_ baby - in her arms, smaller than she had thought possible. "I can't believe you called the fact that she was a girl from day one," Lance says, voice light with teasing even though his voice is croaky from crying. He crawls into bed with her, peering over her shoulder to look and her child.  _Their_ child. God, this is so weird. "She looks so much like you."

"She's cute," Pidge says, and there's a smile on her face, exhausted as can be, that she can't quite stop. Her baby's still covered in the muck that they haven't yet cleaned off, but there's a cute little nose under there and a set of eyes that are still closed, even throughout all of the cries and screams that she's let out. "I mean it, too. I kind of expected her to look like a weird little alien for at least a month."

Lance laughs and presses a kiss to Pidge's shoulder. He'd held himself together until the moment that he'd seen their daughter, and then he had just started bawling. He's still crying and sniffling a little, now, but at least he can get words out. "You are a goddess," he tells her. "You are the strongest person that I've ever met."

Allura coughs awkwardly, not wanting to interrupt their moment. "Pidge? Can I see her for a tick? We should clean her up a little."

Pidge is hesitant to relinquish hold of her new daughter, especially since the time that they've shared has been so short, but she nods. "Yeah. Okay." She lifts up her arms to give her to Allura, who takes her gently and slowly. There's blood and Pidge's arms and torso now, but she can't really find it in her to care. She'd read a few times that many moms don't really feel that  _connection_ with their baby right away, whether due to hormones or exhaustion or something else, but Pidge sure feels it, and she's overwhelmed by how  _strongly,_ too.

Lance loops his arms around her waist and holds her close. "When do you want the others to come in?" he asks. "I'm pretty sure Matt's right outside of the door."

Pidge hums. "Matt can come in whenever. I wanna wait on the others, just because I don't want it to get way too crowded in here when I'm still so-" She makes a motion with her hands to display what her words can't.

"Gotcha," Lance says, resting his head in the crook of her neck. "I can't believe we had the first human baby in space."

A laugh bubbles up in Pidge's throat. "I  _know,_ right?" she says. "That's so cool! Do you think she'll be in a history book?"

"Of course, once we bribe the Garrison enough," is Lance's answer, and she can feel his grin against her neck.

Pidge smiles when Allura comes back. "You should probably take that shirt off," Allura says, almost a little apologetically. "You can change into another shirt if you wish, though it will help if you have skin-to-skin contact with her."

Pidge had read that, too, since apparently the contact helps with getting her to latch, so she moves to do so. She supposes that she should have some sort of qualms with yanking off of her shirt in front of three people, ( _four people)_ but dammit, she wants to hold her baby and two of those people have been staring at her vagina for the past nine hours anyway. She does so, bundling up the bloodied shirt that she'd been wearing and tossing it across the room. 

Once she's holding her baby again, it's pretty easy to tell the ethnicity that's present on her features: the ethnicity that Pidge doesn't share. It had kind of been what she had expected, so she lets it go. Small eyes blink up at her, the same gray that Pidge's eyes had been before they'd changed to their current light brown. "She opened her eyes!" she says, beaming wide. "Are we still calling her Maricela?" she asks Lance, looking at him for just a moment before looking back at her daughter. "I like that name for her. Mari. Maricela."

"I like it, too," he agrees, and she can tell that he's trying to hold back his excitement at the fact that she has a name that's so tied to where he grew up. Even if Maricela doesn't technically share Lance's blood, she has his whole heart already. Pidge can tell that as easily as she can tell the color of the sky. "Can I hold her?"

"Of course," Pidge says, and feels a little bit bad for not offering already. "Here - sit by the foot of the bed." He does so, kissing her on the temple when he gets up from his position next to her. When she hands him the baby, he takes her with the ease of someone who has grown up around children. It's a sight that Pidge wants to embed into her memory forever. Lance, smiling down at Maricela, and the baby sleeping and content in his arms. If she had a camera with her, she'd take a picture, but it's good enough just to witness it firsthand. She loves them both.

"Can you go let Matt in, babe?" Pidge asks. "I don't think I can get up. Um - oh, I should probably put a shirt on, too."

Lance gives her Mari and reaches over to where he had been sitting before he'd climbed into the bed, lifting the baby bag off of the ground. "Of course. I have a dress for you," he says, and pulls out the garment. They'd gotten it off of some planet, but she's blanking on which one right now. "I figured you wouldn't want to wear pants."

"You get me," Pidge says. In an ideal world, she would have had one of those plastic hospital gowns, but, well, this isn't an ideal world. She tugs on the dress, but is too lazy to lift her hips off of the bed to pull it all the way down, so she just lets it bunch up.

Matt comes in after about a half an hour, takes one look at the three of them on the bed, and immediately starts sobbing. Pidge laughs, not to be mean, but because she had expected no less. At the sound of tears, Maricela starts crying, too, and then Pidge is shushing both of them. "It's okay," she tells Matt, even though she's looking down at her daughter. "Everything went okay."

"I've been crying for the last  _five hours,_ " he informs her through his tears, moving to sit by the bed. "I cried the second that you went in, and then I was almost fine, but then when you started screaming, I started crying again, and you kept swearing in Italian and Hunk wanted to know what it meant but I couldn't tell him because I was too busy _crying,_ and then I was almost fine again but then I heard the baby start crying and then  _I was crying_ and-"

Sometimes, Pidge forgets that her habit of rambling comes from her brother. "It's okay," she repeats, voice low. "It's a girl. Do you wanna hold her?"

Matt nods jerkily, wiping his tears. "I need a minute," he says. "I'll get snot on her.  _Her._ Oh my God, I have a niece. What's her name? Tell me so that I can cry it all out now."

"Maricela," Pidge tells him, and she's crying a little, too. Matt mouths the word with his lips and then his shoulders start moving with his sobs. She hasn't seen him cry this hard since she had first told him that she was pregnant, all that time ago over the video call.

"I think you broke him," Lance whispers.

"It happens sometimes," she whispers back. "I feel a little bad about it."

Matt holds Maricela gently, as if he's afraid to break her. He hasn't had any experience with babies before, none that Pidge knows about, anyway. "She's so small," he whispers, staring down at her with amazement. "I was expecting her to be bigger. I guess she takes after you, huh?"

"Yeah," Pidge agrees. "She really does."

 

* * *

 

"I'm telling you, man," Hunk says as he stares down at the baby in his arms, once he and the other two are finally allowed into the room. Pidge feels guilty, because she had meant for them all to be allowed in earlier, but she'd fallen asleep soon after Matt had come in and had slept for a few hours. "Those are my eyebrows. Every Garrett has them."

"What?" Lance asks, and even if Pidge wasn't looking at him, she would be able to detect the grin in his voice. "No, dude, she  _obviously_ has my bone structure."

"Knock it off, you two," Shiro says with a roll of his eyes. "It's not like any of that matters." His lip quirks up a little and he looks down at Maricela. "Besides, those are clearly my ears."

None of them comment on the obvious characteristics that Maricela has that aren't Pidge's, and she loves them all the more for it. Keith looks amused from where he's leaning against the wall, but he doesn't have anything to contribute. "I think that she's Keith's," Pidge declares, and grins at him. He arches an eyebrow at her. "She has his human side."

"Oh, of course," Lance says, highly sarcastic. "My mistake. I was a  _fool_ for not seeing it earlier."

"She sleeps a lot," Hunk notes, having decided that the conversation they're having is no longer interesting. "I thought that she would cry more."

"When she's not sleeping, she's crying," Pidge tells him. "She just happens to be sleeping right now."

As if on cue, she watches as Maricela's eyes blink open. There's a few seconds of silence as she blearily looks around her surroundings, probably not processing any of it, and then -

"I'm sorry!" Hunk says through the sound of wails. "I'm sorry, I jinxed it, here, do you want her back?"

"Sure," Pidge agrees, taking her and pressing her against her chest. "Hi, darling, what's the matter? What's the matter?" It's a little like talking to Bae Bae, but with a little easing up on the cooing tone. "Are you mad that we woke you up? We're sorry!"

The crying doesn't last forever, and when it ends, Maricela sticks out her tongue a little, which is such a small gesture that Pidge would have completely missed it if she hadn't been looking for it. It's an adorable sight, but it's also a sign, so she looks up at her friends. "I'm about to whip my tit out," she blurts, "because I think she's hungry. If you guys don't care, then I don't, either."

"You're so good with words, dear," Lance says.

"Shut up." No one makes any move to leave within the next few seconds, so Pidge shrugs and pulls down the neckline of the dress. It had been difficult the first time, but she had latched eventually, so hopefully it will work this time. Pidge whispers hushing words to her daughter as she tries to get her to latch, which happens after just a minute. "So, it's apparently, like, really exhausting to do this," she says, mainly because she feels weird that nobody is talking as they all try to avoid staring at her boob. "I didn't think so? But the first time, I just fell asleep after." She leans down to rub Mari's head a little, mainly to keep her awake.

"Does that hurt?" Keith asks, and Pidge remembers when he'd asked her the same question about when the baby was kicking. When she glances up at him, he looks... surprised. Concerned, maybe? He probably hasn't had any experience with babies, either.

"Not really," she says. "It did a little the first time because she wasn't latched on properly, but we fixed it. It's okay now."

"Huh," he replies. "Pidge, I think you're the most badass one out of all of us."

"Agreed," everyone says in response, and Pidge can't even deny it, because she feels as though she's just ran a marathon and won first place.

 

* * *

 

Pidge stays in the med bay for one more night before she feels up to going back to her old room. The first time she had stood up, blood had ran down her legs. "Um," she had said, "this is fine, I guess." It really  _had_ been fine, and apparently just a common symptom that Pidge had overlooked, but it had postponed her departure from the med bay by quite a little.

She puts Maricela to bed by herself that night, since Lance had passed out in their bed for "a five minute nap, I promise" an hour ago and she had felt too bad to wake him. "Goodnight, _[cucciola](/works/15758259),_ " she whispers, leaning down into the crib to press a kiss to her forehead. "I would say that I'll see you in the morning, but you'll probably wake me up in a few hours, huh, sweetheart?"

She hears a snort and turns. There's Shiro, in the doorway, smiling warmly at her. "Sorry to intrude," he says, voice quiet. "I was just on my way to bed and wanted to make sure you had everything you needed."

"I think she's good for now, but thank you," Pidge says. She's grateful for Shiro, really, so she beams at him. "Tonight's probably going to be the first sleepless night out of many, but I got it under control."

"Good," Shiro says, and even in the dark light, she can see him wipe his eyes. She blinks for a second, wondering if it's just a trick of the light.

"Are you crying?" she blurts out, and then feels bad. "Sorry. You're not the only one, though. I think the only person who hasn't cried in front of me today is Keith, but he probably saved it for when he was alone."

"No, it's okay. I'm sorry," Shiro apologizes. "I just - I know it doesn't matter, and I'm going to stand by that for the rest of my life, but when I was holding her earlier, I noticed how much she looked like my older sister."

 _Oh._ Pidge had figured that this would come up at some point. She'd always kind of assumed that it would be his - he's the  _leader,_ after all, so if the Galran assholes who had taken her wanted someone strong, of course they would have gone with him. "Your sister must be cute, then," she teases. Though Maricela has what will presumably end up being Pidge's eye color, the shape of her eyes are completely different. Her skin's another shade, too, and the wisps of hair that are coming in on her scalp are black. She has Pidge's head shape, though, and her nose and her lips, so Pidge decides that it's all fair enough.

Shiro laughs. "She was an adorable baby from the pictures that I've seen," he says. "I miss her a lot. And my nephew. But, hey, I'll see them in a few weeks. Are you nervous to go back home?"

Pidge hesitates at that, not having expected the question at all. "I don't know," she admits. "I was. I don't think I am anymore. It's hard to worry about that."

"That's good, then," he responds, and takes a step out of the doorway. "Well, you're probably exhausted, so I'll let you head to bed. Night, Pidge."

"Goodnight, Uncle Shiro," she teases, and she doesn't comment on how watery his laugh sounds the second time around.

 

* * *

 

She pilots Greenie for the first time in a long time two weeks after giving birth. It feels like riding a bike again, still retaining all of the muscle memory even though you worry that you won't. Pidge  _whoops_ like an idiot and laughs like one, too, feeling invincible and untouchable. She's not even  _doing_ anything, having no planet to defend or invaders to fight off, so she just goes in circles. Greenie seems more than happy to indulge her, and Pidge pretends that the louder-than-usual rumbling of her lion's machinery is her purring.

"Oh, man, I haven't been outside of the castle in almost six months," she says through the comm. "I feel like I was getting cabin fever, staying in there all the time."

"I'd feel the same way," Lance says on the other end, voice crackling with the slightly bad connection. "Hey, in a week, when we go home, maybe we can go on a run together. That sounds nice, right?"

"Make it a walk and I'm good to go," Pidge says with a laugh. "I couldn't run more than a mile  _before_ we went to space, forget about now. None of our training has involved four mile runs."

"Fair enough," he responds. "How much longer do you need out there, dear? Hunk wants me to tell you that dinner will be ready in ten doboshes."

"Gotcha. I'll be back before then. I'm getting separation anxiety from being away from Mari, anyway. How is she?"

"Sleeping," Lance says, and she can hear him rustle around, almost as if he's turning around to check. "She's in her carrier right next to me. When's the last time you fed her?"

"Uh, right before I left," Pidge answers, trying to think back. "So, like an hour ago. We should be good until after dinner, anyway."

"Yay, I'm  _starving,_ " he tells her, and her mouth twitches into a smile at the word _yay._ She's so in love with him. "Hunk is making Arusian food. I  _love_ Arusian food."

"You love everything that you can eat, so I don't think that counts for much," she says, and laughs.

"I was  _not the one_ breaking into kitchens for the past four months."

"Okay, fair."

 

* * *

 

When Pidge had told Shiro that she wasn't nervous to go back home, she had meant it. The anxious feelings stay gone until the moment that they land on Earth, where they all bubble back up to the surface. Oh, God, the Garrison is  _right_ outside, and she knows that her family's there, too. They're going to see each other in just a few minutes, and she has a baby carrier hanging off of her right forearm. Inside of it, Maricela keeps looking around, unable to move her head that much yet but blinking her little eyes every now and then. She's quiet, which is surprising, but Pidge is thankful for it.

Matt smiles at her. "It's all going to be okay," he tells her. "We're here with you every step of the way, you know that, right?"

"Of course," she says. "I'm sure I'll feel great ten minutes from now. I'm just going to worry unnecessarily for now, and then laugh at how stupid it was later."

"Sounds good," he responds, and squats so that he can talk to Maricela. She's finally able to focus on faces, now, and every single one of them has been taking advantage of it. "You ready to meet your grandparents? I'm sure they'll be excited to meet you! There's going to be a lot of people there, though, so it might be a little scary."

"You're a good uncle," Pidge says, and he looks up to grin at her. "That still doesn't mean that she has any idea what you're saying."

"Maybe you have a genius baby," he replies with a shrug. "I wouldn't put it past you. Now, are you ready to bring your useless fears to an end?"

"I guess," Pidge answers. "We should go find the others and see if they're ready."

"I mean this really nicely," Matt says, "but they're all waiting on you."

Which ends up being true. The others are all waiting by the entrance to the ship, but smile at her when she comes into vision. "Are you ready, Pidge?" Allura asks. 

"No," Pidge says. "But we're doing this anyway. Open the door."

It doesn't take a long time to spot her parents. There's a crowd of people who have surrounded the ship in the time that it had taken them to open the doors. Colleen and Sam are holding onto each other and squinting in their direction, trying to see where Pidge and Matt are. Pidge is thankful that she's the shortest out of everyone, because those few seconds where she's successfully hidden behind Hunk and Allura are enough to give her time to prepare. They notice Matt first, and she half-expects him to run to them, but he must know that she's not stupid enough to run with a baby carrier. He places a hand on her shoulder, and a shot of gratefulness runs through Pidge's veins at the realization that he's waiting for her. "Come on, Pidge," he says, quiet, "let's go see our family again, yeah?"

"Okay," she agrees, and the two of them start walking. She  _aches_ to run, to sprint, but she knows that she can't, so she walks slow. Colleen and Sam don't wait where they are, however, and run to them. Pidge feels tears in her eyes, and hastily wipes them away. In just a second, she's in her parents arms again. She moves her arm a little bit so that the carrier doesn't get bumped into, but her left arm wraps around the back of her mother's neck.

"We missed you both so much," Colleen says, sniffling. "It's been so long."

They stay like that, embracing and crying, for what could either be thirty seconds or ten minutes. Pidge loses track of time and just realizes that she's  _back,_ she's  _back,_ she's  _home._ When they pull away, her father looks at her with a smile, and then down at the carrier in her arms. He doesn't  _react_ right away, not the way that she thought he would. He just blinks and goes, "oh."

When her mother notices Maricela, she starts crying even harder. "I know it's, uh, surprising?" Pidge says, not really knowing where to go from there. "She's three weeks old. Her name's Maricela and ... she's mine. It's a really long story that I'll tell you later."

"If she has your genes, then she's going to be great, Katie," Sam says, and the use of her  _real_ name, the one that nobody has used in such a long time, hurts in a good way. "She's a cutie."

"Of course she is," Pidge replies, with a smile that's more amused than she feels. The main emotion going through her veins is just _relief_. "She's related to me, after all."

It's the first laugh that she shares with her entire family in years, and it feels nice.

"You should meet her dad," Pidge tells them. "Uh, not biological dad, because I didn't get that luxury, but ... her dad. He's probably meeting with his own family, though." Sure enough, when she looks, Lance is on his knees and surrounded by what looks to be at least a dozen people. Someone who must be either his dad or his brother, she can't tell from this distance, catches her eye and waves. She wonders how much Lance has told them in the mere few minutes that they've been here, and waves back.

Her mother hugs her again fiercely at the implication. "Oh, sweetheart," she says. "It's been rough out there, hasn't it?"

Being tortured, watching Lance get hurt, the flashbacks, the panic attacks- they all flicker through Pidge's mind like a film in fast forward. "Yeah," she agrees. "It's been rough. But I always had my team."

 

* * *

 

When Pidge first meets Lance's family, the night after they arrive, she's immediately drawn into a group hug not so different from the one that he had gotten upon their arrival. She hopes that they like her as much as _her_ family had liked Lance. He'd charmed her mother thoroughly with his smiles and his accidental speech about the "soul behind Pidge's eyes," which had been only a little bit embarrassing to bear witness to. 

Everyone in his family introduces themselves one after the other, and Pidge scrambles to keep up - Veronica, Marco, Luis, Rachel, the two kids whose name Pidge is currently blanking on, his parents -

"Your Lance's girlfriend, huh?" his mom says, squeezing her cheeks endearingly. Her Spanish accent is thick, but Pidge has been deciphering accents ever since she moved from Italy, so she understand quickly enough. "You're just as short as I am! I like you already."

"Thank you, ma'am," she says with a smile. "Lance talks the world about all of you."

"And you, too," his mom responds, a twinkle in her eye. "He told us the whole story, and we just want you to know that we think you are  _so_ strong. Isn't that right?" She directs the last part at the rest of her family, who exclaim agreeing remarks while Pidge just blushes.

"Mama," Lance says, voice almost a whine, "we don't have to talk about that."

"He's right, Mom," Veronica says, and smiles apologetically at Pidge. "You  _are_ a badass, though. You're the one who disguised herself as a boy for a year, right?"

"Uh, yeah," Pidge confirms. "I didn't realize that that was well-known, though."

"Dude, everyone's  _obsessed_ with you! The fact that you could get past all of your weird security measures is amazing." Veronica  _does_ seem amazed. "Ever since Lance said that you were his girlfriend yesterday, we've all been talking about how we're going to kill him if he lets you go."

"I'm not going to-" Lance tries, but he's drowned out by the rest of his siblings speaking over him. Pidge just shrugs in his direction.

"We want to meet the baby, soon, too!" Luis butts in. "It'll be nice having a niece of my own, for a change, since these two are mine." He tickles the two children in question who laugh up at him. "Nadia's that much of a handful, but Sylvio-"

"I heard that!" Sylvio cries, as if it had ever been any type of secret.

"We heard that you named her Maricela, right?" Rachel asks. Her voice is smooth, and she gives Pidge biker vibes - the leather jacket with the rainbow pin, the bright lipstick. "That's cute. It's a pretty common name in Cuba."

"Lance suggested it and I fell in love with it," Pidge replies, grinning. "She's with my brother right now since he kept saying I was working too hard, but I could probably introduce her to you tomorrow."

"We would love that," Lance's mom says. "We've been staying at a house nearby! You can come over for dinner, and we can talk about the wedding, and-"

Pidge chokes on her own spit.

" _Mama!_ " Lance yells, not angry but clearly mortified. "I hadn't gotten to that part yet!"

"Oops," his mom says, but she doesn't sound sorry at all.

 

* * *

 

"So," Pidge says that night, hands on her hips. She's sitting on Lance's knees as he lays down flat on their bed, tracing shapes into her leg. They have to sleep in the Garrison dorms, which is highly annoying, but the alarm system and the security gives her peace of mind about Maricela being in her own room next door. "When's the  _wedding,_ Lance?"

He groans and uses his hand that's not on her leg to shield his eyes from view. "I  _told_ her that I hadn't talked to you about it yet!" he exclaims. "I just said that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you, but I didn't know if you'd say yes because it'd only been nine months and we're both so young, and it had seemed like a _much_ better idea when we were in space and could die any second! I told her that I hadn't given you the -" Lance cuts off there, groaning again as if he hadn't meant to say that last part. Pidge isn't an idiot, so she connects the dots in an instant.

"The  _what,_ Lance?" she asks, voice high with amusement as she looks down at him. "Aw, you didn't  _get_ me anything, did you? No  _finger_ jewelry, huh?"

"Shut up," he tells her. "It's in my bag somewhere. I was going to get you another one, anyway, since the only rings in  _space_ that I could find were some cheap ones at the Olkarion market, and-"

She leans down, pushing his hand that's covering his eyes aside, and kisses him. It's been  _way_ too long since she has kissed him properly, having pushed aside romance during the last few months of pregnancy. "I'll wear it anyway," she tells him after, smiling down at him. She hadn't known how much _love_ that she had in heart to give until she had two more people to direct it towards. "You don't have to get me another one."

"I want to," he tells her. "I want people to know that it's an engagement ring. Plus, if I don't, Rachel will kick my ass and try to marry you herself."

"Ooh, so it's an  _engagement_ ring, she says, even though she'd known that from the start. "That's funny, sweetheart, because I don't actually remember being asked any questions."

"I hate you."

"No, you don't," she says, and she knows that she's acting like a middle schooler, but she can't help it. "You  _love_ me. You want to  _marry_ me. You want to raise my  _baby_ and have a few  _more,_ you want to grow  _old_ with me and  _kiss_ me." She's singing the words instead of speaking them, and even though she's making fun of him, she knows that there's a blush high on her cheeks. "I want a long engagement. Years and years and years. I don't want to get married until I have at least two degrees."

"Of course," Lance agrees. "No need to rush anything when we've got all of the time in the world, right?"

"Right," she confirms. "And now you're legally bound to drive me everywhere for the rest of our lives, because I'm a horrible driver."

"I might not have asked a question, but I think I know my answer," he says in return, and he's grinning.

"Ask me anyway," Pidge tells him, "so that when we have ten kids ten years from now and they want to know the story, we can at least pretend we did  _something_ in this relationship the right way."

"Katerina Pidge Holt," Lance says in a dramatic tone of voice, as if Pidge is her middle name, but it softens into something more sincere as he continues, "I love you, and I want to do everything else that I ever do with you. I want to spend so much time with you that people make fun of us. I want to drive you crazy with how stupid I am, and I want  _you_ to drive me crazy with how recklessly brave you are. I want to cry at our wedding and at all of our anniversaries, and at all of our babies' birthday parties. I  _do_ want more kids, but only if you do, because God knows that you and Maricela are more than enough for me to be happy for the rest of my life. I want to be a great dad to her, and a great husband to you. So, please, darling, babe, snookums - will you marry me?"

Pidge blinks for a second. She's not sure where  _that_ speech had come from, but it makes her bite her lip in order to keep it from wobbling. "Of course," she tells him. "Yes. Yes. Yes."

He tugs her down into another kiss, except they keep having to pull apart because they can't stop grinning like idiots. Then, they're both just laughing, foreheads pressed together, giddy and pure and sweet.

"I love you," she whispers to him. They don't say it _all_ the time, but when they do, it always rings true. "I love you so much."

He opens his mouth to say it back, but they're interrupted by the sound of wailing from the next room over. Pidge laughs again and pulls herself upright. In the last week or so, getting up once or twice a night to tend to her daughter has been  _exhausting,_ but there's something about Lance proposing that has filled her with a surge of energy. She feels like she could take on the world, take on the  _universe_ all over again, and still have everything that she loves right there next to her.

"I'll be right back," she says, striking a pose that she  _thinks_ is Superman, but it's been so long that she might be getting it all wrong. "I'm Superman! I must save ... er, Gotham?"

"I'm so ridiculously in love with you that I might die," Lance tells her in response, which really only tells her that she'd guessed the city incorrectly. "Don't keep me waiting too long, okay? I'll have to send a search party."

"I'll never leave you waiting," Pidge assures him, and even though she's talking about going to soothe Maricela, she's also talking about everything. About never making him wait up at night wondering if she's okay a million miles apart. About never making him feel like he has to wait to tell her things, to ask her for support. She'll never make him feel like he has to wait for things to get better, because she'll be there for him.

She's not sure if he reads between the lines or not, but his dorky grin makes it seem like he does. "I know."

 

**Author's Note:**

> No mean/criticism comments please! I'm just doing this for fun.


End file.
